Time Spins Backward
by Sapphire Insanity
Summary: So many people have died and Harry can't live with that any longer. He makes a desperate attempt to go back and change things, but something goes wrong. In another reality a five year old Harry wakes with vague memories that aren't his own...


**Disclaimer;** I don't own Harry Potter

 **A/N;** A new story, even though I really need to get a move on the other ones. Well, I hope you enjoy it!

 **Summary;** So many people have died and Harry can't live with that any longer. He makes a desperate attempt to go back and change things, but something goes wrong. In another reality a five year old Harry wakes with vague memories that aren't his own...

 **Chapter One;**

Harry Potter could feel the beads of sweat rolling down his face as he shakily sketched another rune into a small stone. Six months of preparation had all come down to this, and nothing was going to stop him now.

Who was there to stop him, anyway? The majority of the wizarding world cared nothing about him beyond his 'saviour status', his few friends were off creating their own lives, and the ones he had called his family were dead.

His parents, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Albus Dumbledore, the Weasleys... they were all gone, taken from the world – from him – much too soon. His hands shook a little more at the reminder of the entire extended Wealey family. Three months after the final battle, when they had all began to settle down and realise that it was _over_ a crazed Death Eater had come and blown up the Burrow during a family dinner. Harry, who had been invited, had been running late, and was at the gate when it had happened. The shock wave and flying debris had knocked him unconscious and he had come to in the hospital with the news of the death of the Weasleys and Hermione being the first thing he had heard.

And then, barely a month later, Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin had been involved in a crash. A muggle bus in the heart of London... it had taken three days after the event that Harry had heard who had been involved and by then it had been too late. They were gone, along with everyone else.

It had to be someone's idea of a sick joke, it really did. All these people kept being taken from him and he was always left behind. How was he expected to continue on when things like this kept happening?

He could almost hear Hermione berating him in his head for the thought and Harry let out a choked sob, struggling to keep his hand still as he carved the last of the rune. Carefully he laid it down with six others and picked up the last, currently blank, stone. After he had finished with this one he would be ready.

Hermione would have been proud of the frenzy of research that had enveloped him six months previously, though probably distinctly horrified at what was driving him. At first it had been slow, making him lament that he hadn't listened with his best friend more when he was younger, but eventually he had picked up the pace and found what he wanted.

There was no magic in the world that could bring back the dead, and Harry had come to terms with that after Sirus' death. He wasn't seeking to bring any of them back anyway.

At least, not in the traditional sense.

Memories of the book that had first begun him on this quest swam before his eyes. Luna, one of the few close friends he had had left, had given the book to him with a sad, understanding look that he hadn't been able to comprehend at the time, nor even two days later when she was killed by a dark wizard attempting to escape the Aurors. After her death, grieving yet another loss, Harry had sat down to read it with her last words to him echoing.

" _All is not as lost as it seems, Harry,"_ she had whispered, pressing the book into his arms. _"Sometimes something can be found in the most unexpected place."_ She had smiled knowingly then. _"Good luck on your return, and farewell until I see you next, my friend."_

Looking back on them the words had definitely been a final goodbye, and Harry had thought that she meant she would see him in the afterlife, though how she had known she was going to die was beyond him. But then he had read the book, and realisation had hit him.

Most people would have scoffed at the ideas that the book presented... Hermione most prominently among them. Maybe Harry would have too, once upon a time, mostly because the impossible couldn't become possible, right? But as he had grown up he realised that he _lived_ the impossible and he became open minded, even before the deaths of all he held dear. It was perhaps why he got along best with Luna out of he, Ron Wealey and Hermione Granger... he was more willing to listen to and believe in her outrageous theories.

The book was one of those things that only Luna and her father would have a chance of believing, but Harry found himself believing too the more he read. The idea of hundreds of different realities and times in the universe was absolutely outstanding, and it was preposterous that such a theory could ever be proved.

But, oh, if only it was true! One single difference could create an entirely different timeline. What if only three founders had created Hogwarts? What would happen if Merope Gaunt had never met Tom Riddle? Maybe Lily Evans could have fallen in love with somone else, or Harry could have accepted Slytherin... so many possibilities!

All it would take was one tiny little thing and everything could change.

The more Harry read the more hope began to bloom inside him. What if _he_ could find one of these realities, with a timeline that wasn't much different to his own, and change things so that everything happened differently? He could oust Quirrel early, make sure Ginny never got that diary, anticipate Sirius' arrival and capture Pettigrew, maybe even prevent Voldemort from ever coming back!

And... he would get to see everyone again, alive and healthy.

On occassion he wondered if he might be able to go to a _completely_ different world, where he was living a normal life with his parents, but he had discarded these ideas. The concept was tempting, but he needed to fix _this_ life and save his family, the only family he had ever known.

Hermione's voice stayed with him throughout all his research, his conscience and logical side taking on her characteristics to try and talk some sense into him. Eventually, though, even that logic succumbed, and her voice became the epiphanies that drove him to his last, eventual success.

' _This shouldn't be done,'_ her voice said now in last, feeble protest. _'Everything could go wrong. You could die...'_

"I'm sorry, Hermione, but I don't care," he said firmly in reply.

He paused for a moment in the act of carving the last rune and then laughed hollowly. Great, now he was even responding to his conscience as though it really _was_ Hermione. Maybe he really was, finally, going insane.

Did it really matter, though? If he was truly about to die, then insanity would be the least of his problem. And, if he actually managed to succeed in this impossible venture, then perhaps a little insanity would be just what he needed to fix things.

' _Mad,'_ said another little voice, this one sounding startlingly like Ron. _'Stark, raving mad.'_

Harry didn't react to this one either. In fact he let a small smile slip onto his face, because he knew it was something that Ron would have said if he could see him now.

Madness wasn't so bad, though. Madness was what had driven him to this final, desperate attempt, madness was what had kept him alive and functioning at least somewhat normally since the deaths of everyone he cared about.

And, truly, madness had ruled a large majority of his life. It had been madness for an eleven year old to challenge Voldemort and Quirrel, madness for a twelve year old to fight a Basilisk, utter insanity for a fourteen year old to compete against three of-age students...

And what had been his seventeenth year been but a long period of deranged searching and high emotions as he struggled to pit himself against the evilest wizard in the world?

So, really, this lapse of judgement fit right in. He would chuck himself into this with the same reckless abandon that he did everything else, and hope for the best.

And if he should fail?

Harry smiled slightly again as he finished carving the last rune and put it in its place. If he should fail as he half-suspected he would then, one way or another, he would finally join his loved ones.

Grimacing slightly as his legs protested after sitting for so long Harry got to his feet and made his way into the circle of runes. With a flick of his wand the curtains closed, plunging the room into darkness but a single flickering candle.

Excitement and trepidition warred for dominance within his chest. It was finally time... there was nowhere to go but forwards.

Or back, as he hoped.

The exact centre of the circle was marked clearly for him and he stood on the line he had already drawn, taking a potion from his pocket with slightly trembling hands. He didn't know what he would find at the other end, didn't even know if he had done it right, but it had to better than being all alone here.

With this thought he drained the vial and threw it out of the circle, letting it smash against the wall. Then, heaving a deep, steadying breath, he turned to face the east and bowed.

" _Inclina ad orientem,_ " he said, his tongue easily forming the unfamiliar words that he had practiced for weeks on end. He turned to the west and repeated the action. _"...occidentem... aquilonis... et meridiem..."_ In turn he bowed to north and south and then kneeled in the circle. He was too far gone to stop now. _"Tunc ora deae – excussus semper antrorsum – proiciam se ipsum... sumere animum revocet manus, et pax, amice!"_

For a long moment there was silence, as though the world itself was holding its breath in anticipation of what would happen next. Harry remained where he was standing, feet slightly apart, eyes clenched tightly shut.

' _Why isn't it working?'_

Nothing was happened. Harry didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or cry as he realised this. After all this time, all those months, the one thing that had given him hope had failed completely.

' _What do I do now?'_ he wondered desperately.

But, for once, there was no answer from one of his friends' voices. It was though they had abandoned him along with hope. With a suppressed sob he fell to his knees.

That was it... there was nothing left in him. Not only had it failed, it hadn't even done what it was supposed to do when it was incorrectly, which was sweep him away on the tides of death. Perhaps it was time to just do it himself...

It was as this thought crossed his mind that one of the runes began to glow. Then the two on either side lit up. This started a chain reaction all around the circle until, soon, every single rune was shining brilliant.

Harry gazed at them through slightly blurred eyes, trying to register what he was seeing. Then a tiny flame of hope bloomed in his chest.

"Please," he whispered, barely realising that he was speaking out loud. "Please, take me to them... somehow."

As though in direct response the light flared until it hurt to even look at it and Harry folded in on himself, covering his face with his arms. He didn't care what happened anymore, he just wanted to be with the people he loved...

Almost immediately he knew that something wasn't right. The book had described the ritual as being without any sensation, but this was immediately putting that to lie. He could feel the strangest thing happening within him, as if his spirit was slowly moving away from his body. It was getting harder and harder to even wiggle a finger the longer that he sat there and he knew, without a doubt, that his body was dying.

If the ritual had gone right, then he should have felt nothing but a slight jolt as he shifted suddenly from one realm to the other. He would have been able to stand and make his way to wherever he wanted to go; perhaps to Azkaban to see Sirius, or to rescue his younger self from the Dursleys. This... no, this wasn't working. Instead it seemed to be slowly killing him.

' _At least it's painless,'_ he thought drowsily as he slumped sideways, unable to even remain sitting any longer. _'And soon I'll see them all again...'_

He closed his eyes and let himself fall unconscious, knowing he would never wake up again.

In a way he was right. The Harry Potter that sat in that magic circle would never again open his eyes. But the world has a different way of working things that no mortal would ever be privy to.

The moment Harry was gone from his body the world stopped.

And then it spun.

It spun so fast that no one would even know what was happening. If there was a way to describe it, it would not be that the world was physically spinning, but rather the time that was within it. Events that had happened stopped and events that were going to happen became no more.

The Harry Potter that laid on that floor and had disappeared the moment he was gone would never see the light of day again. But that didn't mean an altogether different Harry Potter wouldn't.

And so, thousands of seconds and minutes away from when the ritual had finished, the recently five-year-old Harry James Potter woke with a gasp.

 **Coming Up;** _Chapter Two;_ Several years later, Harry Potter turns eleven, he's about to attend a school for magic… and he still doesn't know what to do with the odd flashes of what he is starting to suspect might be the future…


End file.
